Keys
by Coke Cam
Summary: When Maura Isles decides to uncover why her best friend despises celebrating her birthday, she finds a surprisingly deep hurt buried in Jane's past. She also discovers that she holds the keys to both setting it right and setting Jane free. (Complete one-shot—some angst with happy ending)


**Please note **- this is not "Keys" by colormetheworld which you can find listed under her profile. You will probably enjoy that one more. :-) She has however very graciously encouraged me to keep using the title which was already selected for this story when she began posting hers.

For Rizzy-and-Izzy who was such a good sport about being the 100th person to Favorite "Coffee, Tea or Me".

* * *

Det. Jane Rizzoli pushed through the swinging morgue doors with one shoulder while keeping her hands well clear. In them she held a sloppily frosted cupcake with a tiny candle planted atop like a flag at the summit of a very pink garbage pile.

"Maura? Hey, you still here?"

Jane peered around the autopsy room, moving jerkily in agitation. Her dark hair, unruly on the best of days, had given up any attempt at holding itself together at 6 o'clock on a Friday. She checked in the lab area, giving the decontamination shower a wide berth, and circled back to the medical examiner's office. A thin stream of light came from under the closed door.

"Maur?" Jane tapped with her elbow and pushed the door open. "Are you OK?"

Her best friend, looking impeccable in a form-fitting, cobalt blue sleeveless dress, barely looked up. "Yes, thank you."

Jane waited a moment, expecting her to tidy up the papers, stand, retrieve her jacket (there had to be a jacket somewhere), and ask in an off-hand way if Jane could join her on a last minute errand. At that point the surprise party trap would spring because it was Jane's birthday and that was how the game went.

But apparently not this year.

"You sure you're OK?" Jane asked. "'Cause you look kinda distracted."

Maura continued writing, then flicked her glance up coolly. "No, this is what I look like when I'm focused."

"Oh right, 'cause you're really scattered the rest of the time." Nothing. "C'mon, Maur, we're an hour past quitting."

Dr. Maura Isles let her eyes close as if suddenly too weary to endure another moment. "Jane. In case you hadn't noticed, the criminal element of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts does not have a clock which it uses to punch in and out, nor does it observe what you so elegantly term 'quitting time'. At best, we can hope for diurnal criminals."

"As opposed to...?"

"Nocturnal ones. Day, night," she said absently as she frowned at the lab report. Another minute passed in which Jane shifted her weight, wondered what Maura was really planning for her birthday, what Maura wanted for her own birthday, if she could get one of those tribal masks at World Market, and if so...

Maura looked up with the ghost of a sigh. "Was there something specific on your mind?"

Jane felt her eyes shifting away and seeking out some far corner of the room. "Yeah," she mumbled. "Y'know, it's Friday. And sometimes we go get a drink. I wouldn't call it celebrating of course because that would be silly. Crime...bad. It would be a coincidence."

Maura didn't look exactly mollified, but she did at least neaten her papers and cap the Mont Blanc pen she used for especially serious autopsies. Jane set the cupcake on the corner of Maura's desk.

"And what do I owe this to?"

Jane felt her heart dip a little further. Maura hadn't even leaned forward to investigate the treat. What came after _pissed_ in the medical examiner spectrum of emotion? "Ma made it for me," she said. "I thought you might like it. It's got pink on it." _Jesus, stop talking!_

"Thank you," Maura said simply. "You don't want it?"

"It's vanilla," she explained. "Which makes me think of Rondo and that's the last thing I want when I'm trying to eat." Then, before she could stop herself, "She knows I like chocolate. Why the hell, if she's going to make me a birthday cupcake that I don't even want, doesn't she at least make it chocolate?"

Maura gave her two very steady, long blinks. "Perhaps because she suspects you'll just throw it away?"

"Yeah, well," Jane groused, "she's right."

Maura crossed her forearms on her desk blotter and seemed to be counting to three. "I realize I may be putting pearls before swine, but when you repeatedly insist that you don't want anyone to make a fuss out of your birthday, then logically you shouldn't be surprised when they actually do what you tell them to."

"OK, I think you may have just called me a pig, and...and look, I don't care," Jane groaned, "I don't care that Ma made me a sucky cupcake, but I feel like she's mad at me or something and now you're acting like that too."

Maura raised one perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Acting would imply that I wasn't sincere."

Somewhere along the line, Jane wasn't quite certain how, the whole conversation had gone off the rails. She had meant to simply descend to the morgue, make a few jokes to get her best friend to laugh at the stupid cupcake, then allow herself to be grudgingly dragged along to whatever celebration had been planned. The birthday itself was bad enough, but now Maura seemed angry with her, and if that were the case then the odds were very, very good that she had done something to deserve it.

Maura had pushed her chair back now and was standing with one hand on her hip as it jutted out. Absently, with the part of her mind that wasn't scrambling for cover, Jane thought it was an attractive look on Maura.

"All right, one time offer," she said hastily. Her voice had dropped, serious and level now. "Tell me what I did and I'll apologize, no questions asked."

Something in Maura's expression shifted and she realized with a jolt that Maura's chin was trembling and she was on the verge of tears. "The truth is, Jane, you're a strong-willed, determined, even stubborn woman and while that makes you an exceptional detective, it also makes you extremely difficult to deal with on your birthday, a day which for some reason I can't begin to fathom you utterly despise."

Maura held up one hand, index finger extended for Exhibit A. "Five years ago, your mother suggested a family cookout for your birthday. You waited until that afternoon to volunteer for a triple shift stakeout, took the overtime pay and bought yourself a membership at a private gun range where you spent one entire afternoon shooting at targets of Bill Buckner's face. The year after that, according to Frankie, you agreed to let him take you to a Celtics game but then called from the car dealership to tell him you were having your oil changed and couldn't make it in time so he should scalp your ticket in the parking lot."

"I was overdue," Jane mumbled. "He made ten bucks profit."

"You encouraged him to participate in an illegal pricing transaction. The year after that, well," Maura wavered, "we were held hostage and you killed Charles Hoyt, and then your mother went a little overboard with the ponies. We can say that one doesn't count."

"I'd like it if none of them counted," Jane muttered.

"And _that _is the problem." Maura slowly stepped around her desk, coming to lean against the front corner nearest Jane. She seemed resigned now, dragged out of her seeming indifference which apparently was a mask for a much deeper hurt.

"Sometimes, Jane, it's as if you don't value your own life. You're an excellent detective because of your intelligence, your instincts and your intuition, but also your willingness to risk your life in the face of danger. I've come to wonder though if some of that is because you don't understand what your death would mean to your family, to me...t-to, I mean, to your mother who loves you so much that she would risk how angry she knows you would be just to make you this." Maura picked the cupcake up gingerly, pressing thumb and forefinger together to hold it by the greasy paper wrapper. "This reminder that you're her only daughter and she's so happy that you came into this world."

Jane honestly hadn't thought she could feel any worse than she already did. Yet again, Maura Isles exceeded expectations. "It's kinda hard to think about what wouldn't affect me," she offered lamely. "I mean, I guess dying affects you but you don't know it?" This was making her head hurt.

"Perhaps since you're so set on not celebrating at all, you should consider what it would mean to your family if you were gone."

"Or," Jane said quickly, "we could do _It's a Wonderful Lif_e." She was still desperately trying to pull this around into something funny, and she knew for a fact that Maura was familiar with the movie because she'd forced her to watch it last Christmas and had been rewarded by Maura crying happily on her shoulder at the end. "What would things be like if I'd never been born at all?"

She began ticking off scenarios on her fingers. "Frankie wouldn't be 'Other Rizzoli'. He'd be the only Det. Rizzoli and maybe he wouldn't feel so insecure about living up to things. Ma wouldn't be worried all the time that I'm never gong to settle down and give her grandkids. She'd be thrilled with TJ and maybe she'd have married Cavanaugh by now if she wasn't so worried what I think about it."

Jane trailed off as Maura had crossed her arms which had a very disturbing effect on the neckline of her dress and it completely shattered Jane's ability to concentrate.

"I think a far more realistic scenario," Maura said quietly, "is that without his older sister to look up to and to inspire him, Frankie became a plumber like your father and never fulfilled his dream of going to the academy. And without your support, I don't think Angela would have left your father, no matter how ridiculous his behavior. Whatever affairs he had, he would have come crawling home eventually and she would have taken him back each time without you to support her."

"I don't th..." Jane began.

"I do." Her voice was softer now, sad but definite. "Tommy, at best, would still be in prison and without a son to make him want to be a better man. Given seniority, Det. Frost would be partnered with Det. Crowe and so depressed about it that he would consider transferring to another city or leaving the force entirely. Sgt. Korsak..." Maura's expression turned thoughtful as her eyebrows furrowed. "A hoarder."

"That's not...OK, yeah, maybe Korsak, but what about you?" she parried. "Married in high society, volunteering with underprivileged scientists with all the extra time you'd have from not dealing with my family and then flying off on weekends to stare at the Musee d'Orsay?"

Maura's expression went carefully neutral before she said frankly, "I'd still be working late, waiting on results, going home to Bass. No difference."

"Gee...thanks."

"Removing a variable from an environment will have an effect, naturally, but you're not in my life like you are with your family." Maura's voice was level and dispassionate but not unkind. "You've always included me, but it's not the same as if..." For the first time Maura seemed to falter. She blinked rapidly as struggled to find the words again. "It's not the same."

Jane felt her heart beginning to slowly pick up speed, moving blood and oxygen to every cell. If this had been an interrogation she would be secretly smiling to herself. Maura Isles had a tell, when she broke eye contact, and there it was.

"Hey," she said gently. "If anything, y'know, you matter even more to me than my family. I hafta let them in when they come over. They're family. But I actually _like_ you." Like? That was such a small word for what hit her heart every time Maura smiled at her. "You're my best friend. I'm not one of those women who had a different one every week in school. That really means something to me."

Maura gave her a faint smile as if to say she appreciated the distinction. "Thank you, but that won't get me into the ICU."

Jane was puzzled for a moment, then realized she was referring to hospital visitation rules which were enforced more strongly in Boston than some cities. "They'd let you in," she said earnestly. "You're a genius doctor and they'd be lucky to have you. I know I am."

Maura was smiling against her will and Jane felt one slim hand slip between her own. For a moment she stood frozen, then carefully turned her hand to clasp Maura's and feel it warm within hers.

_This is the best f'ing birthday ever. Just this, this is all I need. Keep your cupcakes, surprise parties and Celtics games. Maura Isles is my best friend and she wants to hold my hand, even just for a minute._

_For a minute. Only a minute. Just sixty seconds, that's all. Then it's over._

"Jane?"

She looked up, trying to feign innocent confusion, but Maura, genius that she was, had detected something. She was leaning closer now, searching Jane's face for some clue as to what was troubling her. Jane wondered if this was what it felt like when the suspect realized they were cornered and their best option was to offer up some valuable piece of information and cut a deal.

"Maura, I don't have a death wish," she said quietly. "There's nothing sinister about me not liking my birthday, I promise."

Maura squeezed her hand and whatever frustration and disappointment there had been between them before vanished. There was nothing but concern in those bright hazel eyes and somehow Jane found herself talking against her will, but with Maura there had never really been a choice.

"When we were kids, Ma always asked us every year what we wanted, but you learn pretty quick what you're really gonna get. You ask for a bike, the red ten speed in the window at Sunshine Cycles, and you get a mostly purple three speed from Goodwill and your Pop shows you how to sand the rust off the frame. You say you want a stereo with subwoofers, so you get a receiver from the pawn shop and the left speaker kinda comes in and out so you only sit on the right side. You're 16 and you want a car..."

"Jane..."

"No, I know they loved me," she plowed ahead, "it's not that. They had three kids and never enough money and they did a great job. Well, Tommy's not really anyone's fault, but we turned out OK."

"You turned out wonderfully." Now Maura was rubbing one thumb over the back of her hand, like that could erase the scars there and Jane was going to have to tell her to stop, maybe next week, but she just didn't have the strength anymore. "Tell me." Her eyes had crinkled with a hopeful smile now. "I'm a good listener, at least that's what the bodies say."

Jane searched for some joke, some way to kid Maura—_I hear dead people_—but she couldn't joke about this. She'd told the truth when she said she hadn't had many best friends before. Honestly, she didn't have any friends at all outside the department. No one else had ever understood the way another officer could, not until she met Maura. As odd and quirky as she could be, when Maura Isles offered to listen that meant you would have every drop of her undivided genius. More importantly, you had her heart.

_You'll never have her heart._

"The bus stop was six blocks from our house." Jane's throat felt creaky and dry but she forced the words out. "We always walked back the same way, me and Frankie. We had to go by this used car lot and we would look at them every day."

_The uncut grass blades tickled her ankles as her jeans rode up, gapping where she'd outgrown them that summer, the ones that made the other girls call out "Where's the flood, Rizzoli?" Frankie stood beside her in his Carl Yastrzemski jersey he wore every Tuesday during pennant season, even if the Sox hadn't made it, and their fingers locked through the chain link fence as they stared in wonder._

"Mustangs," Jane said, "Camaros, Chargers, Rivieras, Mercurys, you name it. And then one day, there it was."

She felt her voice catch again and then a surge of anger at how it was betraying her. If she could just get through this and make Maura understand why she didn't want to talk about her birthday and that it didn't have anything to do with some stupid non-existent death wish, then maybe everything could just go back to normal.

"A midnight black Lamborghini Countach, honest to God. I dunno how it wound up in our end of Boston, but I couldn't rip my eyes off it. I even dragged Tommy over there just so I could stare some more. Might be where he got the idea to hot wire things actually," she murmured. "It was still there a week later and by then I was starting to have dreams about it. They'd put it under a tarp by then and I swear I could hear the rpms throbbing all the way across the lot because it was just begging to run.

"So a week after that we're working out in the yard and Ma asks me what I want for my birthday. I say something stupid like the new Tom Petty record, and Ma says things are good for Pop at work and he's even hiring help. It's my 16th, she says, it's special and I can have a party and I should tell her what I really want."

_You should have kept your damned mouth shut, just shoved it down where you keep everything else you know you shouldn't want._

A small sympathetic noise escaped Maura and she seemed to be wincing in anticipation of a train wreck she didn't want to see, but she was too good a friend to look away.

"It just...came out." Jane shrugged helplessly. "Once I started I couldn't shut up, what it looked like, the 455 horses, the V12, the scissor doors, and how maybe it was still on the lot because everyone assumed they couldn't afford it but maybe there was a ding or something and they marked it down, so maybe we could ask—it doesn't hurt anything to ask, right?"

_Except it did. It hurt like a mother to open up your heart, to look into someone else's eyes and let them look back into yours and see how badly you want something and how much you need their help and then give them the power to crush your dreams._

_Please, Maura, stop looking at me like that._

"I'm sorry. I..." Maura shook her head as her fingertips strayed to her lips. "I know our childhoods were very different but I think I understand. When I was eight I asked for a cadaver."

"No luck?"

"No, but they did get me my own psychiatrist and eventually he convinced them I had a bright future in medicine. What did your mother say?"

Jane was still trying to shake off the image of an eight-year-old Maura in a French braid and Mary Janes opening up a gift-wrapped coffin.

"Well, from the look on Ma's face, I knew she was shocked so I acted like I was joking and blew it off. We had a party and then Pop called me out back while everyone was finishing cake and he said he had something for me. It was this little box and there was a keychain in it with the Lamborghini logo on it, y'know, the gold bull, and I just stared at it and he said, c'mon, let's go. Car's waiting on you."

Jane smiled down at the floor, unable to meet Maura's eyes. Her hands were resting palm down on the counter behind her and holding her upright since her knees didn't seem to be doing a very good job. "It was...unbelievable. Just the sound it made starting up, the leather, the way it responded to the slightest touch. I couldn't believe it was happening. I actually got something I really wanted, something I didn't remotely deserve—me, Jane Rizzoli. It was..."

She shrugged and somehow the room felt two degrees colder.

"The part Pop kinda forgot to mention was that it was just a test drive. He had asked and Mr. Pellegrino said OK, thirty minutes for your kid's birthday because they were trying to do something nice for me, but then he asked for the keys back and I didn't get it. Pop had to whisper in my ear to give 'em back and my chest closed up and I had to fight so they wouldn't see me start to cry, but it was too late. I was in love and you can't just turn that off, y'know? I didn't understand. I still can't believe how stupid I was. I let myself want and..."

Jane stopped, pressing her lips together. Maura stood perfectly still, respecting her too much to interrupt.

"Sorry. So now someone asks me what I want for my birthday and I don't say anything because it's good to not get what you want. It taught me not to want too much so that way you can't ever be disappointed. Makes you stronger. It's just better this way, OK?"

Maura nodded and then said very softly, "But what if someone just gave you a present. So you could have something nice, something you wanted and didn't have to ask for?"

Jane raised her head, confused by Maura's sudden lapse of reason. Had she not been listening? "I don't _want_ anything," she said numbly. "That was the whole point of the story."

"I heard you; now hear me. If someone...if _I _just wanted to give you something, because I care about you and wanted to show you, no strings attached..."

"You probably could afford a Lambo, couldn't you?" Jane sighed. "But you drive a goddamn Prius. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"Jane." Something in Maura's voice had changed again. Where she had been disappointed and frustrated before, then sad, she was quietly decisive now. "Look at me."

That was a mistake.

Maura Isles was a flesh and blood exotic car, all style, curves and class. Every day Jane simply stared at her in wonder and awe through the chain link fence of their professional friendship. It was a crime that Maura was living in cold storage like this, never approached because half the world was intimidated by her brain, the other half by her looks, and so she sat idling like this, never taken out, never appreciated, never pressed to even half her limits.

As their eyes met, Jane felt her mind begin to hydroplane toward the barrier rail. She tried frantically to brake but her foot went straight through to the floor as she fishtailed and began to fall. For a helpless moment she let her eyes drop, traveling down Maura's body until she found the very safe, boring woven throw rug and fixed on it. Then, cautiously, the tips of two peeptoes came edging into her field of vision and Jane snapped her eyes back up.

Maura was standing just inches away now with the disheveled and crumbling cupcake cradled in her outstretched palm. She had a curious, inscrutable expression on her face as she held it out to Jane. Somehow she had found a lighter, probably for Bunsen burners or some other unspeakable experiment. In two rasping flicks, the candle's wick was burning low above the pink frosting.

Jane instinctively tried to retreat, her back against the counter, as Maura moved closer to reach with her other hand to find the wall switch and flip it off. The office was lit now only by the faint candlelight playing over Maura's features and casting shadows in the soft waves of her hair.

"Close your eyes and make a wish."

Jane's hands had begun to ache and she realized she had been gripping the counter edge so hard that her knuckles had gone white and the scars vanished. That's how it was with Maura though. All the ugly scars and insecurities from the past faded away until all that remained was the present.

_The present. Maura. A present. Her birthday. What do you want, Jane? Tell me. A present—Maura. Anything, Jane, anything in the world._

_Maura._

_More than anything in the world._

_I want Maura._

The candle went out and the office plunged into darkness. Jane heard her own breath mixing with the blood in her ears as they stood in silence for one beat, then two, then... She was too startled to flinch as she felt an arm come to circle her waist and their bodies slipped together with a nearly audible click. Maura slid one hand behind her neck and gently pulled their mouths together in a kiss as soft as it was insistent. In the dark—here, now—there were no witnesses and no evidence. Later they could pretend it never happened, but for this single moment, nothing else existed.

Jane raised her hands, cupping Maura's upturned face and she felt an instant response as Maura pressed even closer to her, refusing to let the kiss end. At first Maura had been trembling but that had settled to a lower frequency now, her body almost humming against Jane's. It wasn't fear or hesitation but the low purr of an engine just beginning to wake.

Even in the dark Jane kept her eyes closed, navigating by feel as she ran her hands lightly up Maura's back, waiting for the vibrations between them to rise, peaking and cresting, before she deepened their kiss as if shifting into second. The cupcake had been lost to the floor and Jane kicked it neatly out of the way, hearing it strike one wall with a soft squish. She knew the janitor had found worse before in the morgue but still wondered what he would think.

Maura was growing restless now, her fingers curled into Jane's shirt and nearly pulling it open another button as they kissed. Jane let one palm trail up Maura's dress, confirming that the curves were as smooth and dangerous as she'd always suspected.

_Responsive handling, check_

_0 to 60, check_

_Brakes?_

_Right. Because you need to stop this now. That's how this works. You get the test drive—you don't get the car. You could never in a million years have something this wonderful. She feels bad for you, that's all. Maura's a nice person but she doesn't get it—she thinks this will make you feel better. She doesn't understand you don't want just a make out session, just one night. You want the whole package but you could never afford it._

_Stop._

_Get out now._

_Walk away._

Gently Jane tightened her embrace, folding Maura against her so that her hands were pinned between them. She tucked Maura's head just under her chin and they stood unmoving together as their breathing calmed.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to get carried away like that." Jane managed to keep some note of humor in her voice. "I bet you were popular at Spin the Bottle."

"I...I don't know what that is." Maura wasn't relinquishing the small hold she'd maintained on Jane's shirt collar.

"Well, you would've been great." Jane kissed her forehead, trying to ease her skin cells out of the crippling addiction they'd formed to Maura's touch. "Thank you," she said awkwardly. "That was probably the best present I've ever gotten." _Probably? Probably?_

"Better than a Lamborghini test drive?"

"Blew my doors," Jane tried to joke, her eyes squeezed tight against the rising tears. Maura said nothing in the dark but Jane felt her slip one arm free, searching for something on the counter. _Please don't turn on the lights, please don't turn on the lights, please..._

Jane felt something hard and ridged pressing into her palm. Her head was spinning and she couldn't remember where the light switch was, so she dug through her blazer pocket to find the photon light she kept for emergencies. Maura lowered her lashes at the sudden brightness and Jane felt the Lamborghini's headlights following her again, daring her to take the wheel. Looking down at her hand, she saw she was holding Maura's keys.

"I don't want them back," Maura said simply. Her eyes were shining and bright as she looked up at Jane. "They're yours."

"I-I don't...what're you trying to say?" Just in case, Jane's fingers had closed around the keyring in a vise grip, but she had fallen for this trick once before.

"You're a very good detective," Maura said with a frustrated sigh, "but you're also the dumbest detective I know. How many clues could you possibly miss?"

"All of them?" Jane croaked, eyebrows raised. Everything apparently, starting with how in the hell was someone as gorgeous and kind as Maura Isles not dating? Because...because it was her choice to remain tucked away under the tarp, waiting for the right one, the one she had already chosen. For Jane?

"My dumb detective." Maura went on tiptoe again and kissed her which set off an entirely new set of aftershocks. "Let's go."

Jane heard the words but still couldn't believe them. Maura was smiling up at her as she had a hundred times before, but now there was a whole universe of meaning that she'd never seen before. "Where?"

"Home," Maura said simply, but something in her eyes said she had a very specific room in mind.

"Y'know," Jane managed when she recovered her voice, "I have a reputation as a kinda fast driver, but you shouldn't believe everything you hear."

Maura's hand closed around hers with the keys trapped between their palms—the keys to her car, her house, to every door between them and forever. "Who said you were going to be the one driving?"

The Beginning


End file.
